


Lifestyles of the rich and famous

by belmanoir



Series: Flying from the blast [6]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Multi, background Tony/Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 23:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce and Pepper chill at home while Tony and Loki are out on the town. There are foot massages.</p><p>Chronologically, this falls between "Pain and Sundaes" and "All this and forgiveness too."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lifestyles of the rich and famous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jadelennox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadelennox/gifts).



> who asked for "a conversation between Bruce and Pepper about the situation as they see it."

Bruce is expending about 80% of his concentration on giving Pepper a foot massage. Pepper is expending 100% of her concentration on her laptop. Bruce can't decide whether that's annoying or endearing. She and Tony are both good at that intense laser focus. Back when Bruce was just a geek, so was he. He can't do it anymore. He has to monitor the Other Guy.

But she's been wearing heels all day. Impractical and uncomfortable. (At least, that's what he's always thought. Now that he's seen Natasha work, he might have to revise his opinion.) He begins stretching her toes.

Both their phones ding. Pepper reaches out, glances at hers, and starts to put it back down. Bruce clears his throat and shows her his oily hands. She holds the phone out so he can see. It's yet another picture of Loki. He's drinking champagne out of a shoe. Actually, Bruce isn't sure he's drinking it. Fluid dynamics isn't his area of expertise, but judging by the angle and size of the shoe and the trickles of champagne on the sides of his chin, Bruce thinks very little is actually going into his mouth. The accompanying text reads, _Great eye contact!_

"Louboutin," Pepper says, a little sadly.

"What?"

She smiles. "The shoes. They're Louboutin. It's a very good designer. I saw them at Sak's for twelve hundred dollars. If they were mine, I wouldn't let anyone pour champagne in them." He looks at the shoes. Beige snakeskin with red soles. He guesses they're cute.

"Is he trying to make us jealous?" Bruce asks finally.

She laughs. "Envious, maybe. You know he'd love it if we went clubbing with him."

The phone dings again. In this one, Loki is laughing and throwing glitter in the air. _He really knows his angles,_ the text reads.

"So this is supposed to make us want to go out with them?" Bruce says with slightly exaggerated puzzlement. Pepper laughs, and Bruce smiles. He loves making Pepper and Tony laugh. "You know you don't have to stay here and keep me company, right?" In theory, he could go out too. He can handle crowds now. 

He worked up to crowds, in his year without an incident. He's only six months without an incident now, but he could handle crowds. Probably he should. It would be good training. It's not smart to hide in Stark Tower like this.

"Ow," Pepper says gently, and he realizes he's digging his thumb a little too hard into the arch of her foot. He drops her foot back in his lap, horrified.

"Sorry."

"It's fine. Bruce, you don't really think I'd rather be out telling Tony not to put champagne in my shoes, do you?"

Bruce gestures at the phone. "And this really doesn't bother you?"

For the first time in the conversation, she takes both hands off her laptop and focuses completely on him. That always makes him squirm a little, inside. He drops his eyes. "Why, does it bother you?"

It does, but Bruce can't put his finger on why. He knows why it _should_ bother him: because Loki is unstable, because Loki has a really spectacular temper, because Loki has a track record of getting large numbers of people killed.

 _You sure we're still talking about Loki?_ Bruce asks himself.

Loki looks like he's having a great time in all the pictures. But Bruce knows that doesn't always mean anything. He's worried, and he doesn't have a good reason. 

"I don't know," he says finally. "I mean, if Loki was having some kind of psychotic break, and he's better now...Tony still won't let him in the same room as you, though."

"Tony's overprotective," Pepper says affectionately. "He knows his life would fall apart without me."

That is spectacularly true, in every possible sense.

"Sure, it's a little weird Tony's dating the guy who smashed our building," Pepper says, as if that was the most important thing that happened during the battle. Their phones ding again. A girl is running down the bar in stilettos to get away from a small green snake. It doesn't look safe.

Pepper sighs. "I wish he'd be more discreet. We won some lucrative energy contracts for the rebuilding, including one from the city for Grand Central Station. A public connection between him and Loki could make the company look very bad."

Bruce rotates Pepper's foot at the ankle, gently, and doesn't say anything.

"If you're worried, you can talk to him," she says, in the tones of someone telling an ambitious child that not very many people become movie stars, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't try. "I pick my battles with Tony."

"But you're not worried?"

There's a moment of silence. She chews on her lip. Then she smiles at him again.

She's the most unruffled person he's ever met, after himself.

"I can't keep Tony safe," she says, and the care she takes not to sound sad makes Bruce's eyes sting. "Tony doesn't need that from me. He needs to know that I love him, that I like him, that I will make sure he eats and bathes regularly and doesn't run his company into the ground, and that I will never let him hurt me. But I can't make him be safe." She looks back at her laptop. "At least Loki doesn't encourage him to drink."

When he first moved in, he wondered if Pepper liked him so much because he was someone who could keep Tony safe. He was actually a little confused when he realized it wasn't true. "He hurts you," he says.

Pepper shakes her head. "Not really," she says. She sounds entirely sincere. Bruce wonders if she believes it. "Not like he could if I let him. I'm very good at saying no."

So is Bruce. He has to be. Maybe that _is_ part of why Tony likes them, because he can't stop once he gets started, with anything. He knows Pepper and Bruce won't let him go too far with them.

Their phones ding. Loki is wearing a long-suffering expression and a feathered headdress borrowed from, Bruce assumes, a stripper. _He's not really selling the garment,_ the text reads. _It looks cheap._

"I'm not sure how good Loki is at saying no," he says.

Pepper laughs. "Are you trying to tell me _Loki_ is a pushover?"

He chuckles uneasily. "No...I just think neither of them will ever be the one to say _stop._ "

There's a brief silence while they both (Bruce assumes) try to think of something hopeful to say.

Pepper sets her laptop down on the coffee table. "I think you need a foot massage more than I do. Come on, pass the lotion." She claps her hands, and he finds himself tugging his socks off and putting his feet in her lap. "Take a picture and send it to Tony," she says. "If anyone should be envious of anyone's evening, it's him."


End file.
